In the prior art, a pair of elongated elements, for example, a pair of elongated wires, generally are welded together manually. An operator holds the pair of elongated elements by hand. While viewing, the operator watches ends of the pair of elongated elements that are to be welded together with a microscope, the operator aligns the ends of the pair of elongated elements with each other. Then the operator turns on a laser welding head to weld the aligned ends of the pair of elongated elements together by a laser beam emitted from the laser welding head.
The step of manually aligning the pair of elongated elements reduces considerably the welding efficiency. In addition, the operator is exposed to injury by the laser beam. In addition, the quality of the weld might suffer because the manual alignment of the elongated wires lacks stability.